"The color of the soft parts is excessively variable. In the adult the bare portion of the tibia varies from dark grass-green to greenish plumbeous; the back and sides of the tarsus and the greater part of the toes are generally pea-green, sometimes duller, sometimes yellower; the front of the tarsus and the first joint of the mid toe black, but sometimes these parts are green, only patched or mottled with black, and sometimes the black extends along the ridges of all the toes; the color of the bill and bare skin in front of the eye varies from sienna-brown to chocolate; sometimes the bill is a sort of light mahogany color, and the bare skin a sort of greenish brown; usually the bills are yellowish at the tips; the lower mandible is generally lighter, sometimes brownish horny, sometimes yellowish horny; and in the breeding-plumage the whole lower mandible becomes apparently a very decided, though dull, yellow; the irides vary from bright to deep yellow. I suspect, though we have not been able to work it out, that these differences in color are due both to age and to season." (Hume.) "Quite common along the reefs. The young were met with on various occasions far inland along fresh-water streams, but we never found fully mature birds in such localities." (Bourns and Worcester MS.) So far as observed, this species is solitary and found only on rocky shores, usually where coral flats are exposed at low tide. Genus NYCTICORAX Forster, 1817. Bill stout; legs rather short; tarsus about equal to middle toe with claw and little longer than exposed culmen; tarsus covered with hexagonal scales; head decorated with two or three long, slender, nuchal plumes and a full crest. Species. a1. Wings ashy gray; back blackish glossed with green. ... nycticorax (p. 170) a2. Wings maroon, nearly uniform with the back. ... manillensis (p. 171) 141. NYCTICORAX NYCTICORAX (Linnæus). Common Night Heron. Ardea nycticorax Linnæus, Syst. Nat. ed. 10 (1758), 1, 142. Nycticorax nycticorax Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1898), 26, 146; Hand-List (1899), 1, 198; Oates, Cat. Birds' Eggs (1902), 2, 123; McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 33. Nycticorax griseus Blanford, Fauna Brit. Ind. Bds. (1898), 4, 397, fig. 96. Calayan (McGregor); Luzon (Meyen, Steere Exp., McGregor); Mindanao (Everett). Africa, central and southern Europe to Indian Peninsula, Malay Peninsula, China and Japan; Greater Sunda Islands to Celebes.